That way, not only can I access them from anywhere in the world, but I can also allow certain people to access certain files that they may require. An example here would be allowing my investment advisor access to my investment account statements etc.
The additional benefits to going online would be searchability (see below), but also the added bonus of knowing that my data is safe against loss (as the majority of mainstream providers have a wide variety of redundancies in place).I only have three requirements here:
1) The files need to be ultra secure. We are talking about my entire life, so serious encryption has to be used in order to ensure the integrity of my data.
2) The files need to be searchable by metadata. Metadata is not document content, it is information about that content. At a simple level, metadata literally means data about data. So a title, author, date written would all be classed as metadata. In the context of PDF files, being searchable by metadata means that I can search by document title, author, creation date... or even text contained in the document.
3) The solution must include a viewer. Simply storing the PDF files is not enough, a flash viewer (ideally) should be available to browse and search the archive.
Most providers meet the third qualification, however surprisingly the first two seem to be harder to come by. It would be great if Google Docs met these qualifiers, however it only currently meets the third. It lacks a secure interface and also does not currently allow for PDF metadata searching. There are other providers, some even meeting the second qualifier, however the first seems to be all elusive.
I wonder if I could set up my own solution. That way at least I could control the security. If anyone has any thoughts on this, fire away! Paul has some interesting thoughts on Google Docs PDF support, detailing some of the limitations and frustrations he's experienced.
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